Medley 197: Haws, Bees, Running, Productivity, Calendars, Brands, Trends, Houses, Revenue, Hotels...

This is the Monday Medley, a newsletter that goes out, you guessed it, every Monday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:

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Happy Monday!

I ran my first marathon yesterday. It was definitely the most challenging physical thing I've done; the last few miles were brutal but I loved getting to do it in Austin and finish in front of the capitol. I suspect I'll do more... though taking this week easy till my legs come back online.

I also added a big module to the Roam Course this week, with a 6 part series on productivity in Roam. It's a kinda funky system, but I love it. It perfectly ties tasks & knowledge together. I've added quite a bit since I first started the early access, so the beta price will go up sometime later this week.

The World of Sponsorship

This week's Medley is brought to you by Woven. I haven't been this excited about a calendar app since Sunrise. It's a much more design-forward way of staying on top of your schedule than other calendar apps, and their built-in templates plus calendly style scheduling links, for free, make it a compelling replacement to GCal and Calendly for me. I definitely recommend it if you want to be more intentional about how you schedule your time.

The World of Millions

😢 Brandless shut down this week. If you haven't heard of them, they're a brand whose whole brand was not having a brand, and selling everything for $3. Sounds kinda ridiculous, but it worked for a while and they raised $290M. This is a good article on everything that went wrong. For what it's worth, they actually had some good products, they were just playing on insane hard mode.

📈 In the interest of trying to hit that next Bitcoin price surge, someone plotted the price trends of Bitcoin against mentions on Reddit. There wasn't that much predictive value in it, but it was neat to see just how closely the price and mentions trended.

🤑 And for about half the entire fundraising of Brandless, Jeff Bezos bought the most expensive house in LA. It cost $165 Million, which "If you make $60,000 a year, that’s like spending $75 on a house."

The World of Flying

🛫 Supposedly the trick to getting airline upgrades is to ask to speak with "revenue management," the department that can release premium seats for upgrades. I haven't actually tried this trick myself, but has anyone else?

🦅 Hawks have an incredible ability to keep their head stable while flying so they can stay fixated on prey. This almost looks fake, crazy how steady its head stays.

The World of Bees

🐝 I shared a bit about bees last week, and it turns out that since 1974 you're about 50% less likely to see a bumblebee in the wild in the US. Main causes seem to be pesticides and climate change.

🏨 If you're interested in bees and want to help them, there are a bunch of things you can do at home besides becoming a full-time beekeeper. Easy ones are just allowing more natural foliage to grow in your yard instead of trying to have that perfect green lawn. The idea of building a "bee hotel" is particularly fun.

🌱 Or... you can get high! Turns out bees love cannabis plants, so supporting their cultivation is a good way to help pollinator populations. I think the logic on that checks out.

🍦 Last thing on Bees: Häagen-Dazs has a fun page on their site about their commitment to helping save the bees. It's probably partially for marketing, but it's still nice.

💡 Also, random fun fact: the founders of Häagen-Dazs made up the name to make it sound Danish, despite the company being founded in Brooklyn.

The World of Performance

🛏 Cosette and I bought an 8 Sleep mattress a bit over a month ago after some frustrations with our chilipad, and I've been loving it. It actually gets too cold on the max setting, which I didn't think was possible. The temperature alarm for the mornings is really nice too, much more pleasant than an alarm clock. I will say that it's on the firmer side so if you're looking for something super plush, this isn't it, but I've been very happy.

⌚️ I also picked up the new Garmin Fenix 6 last week for the marathon. I've been blown away by the power in this device for designing and tracking your workouts. It's so much better than the Apple Watch as a fitness device, and all the features it's missing (touch screen, apple apps) are the ones I don't want anyway. I just wish it weren't so bulky...

The World of Wildlife

🐠 The movie Finding Nemo ended up causing a massive surge in the clown fish market, and unfortunately, a lot of damage to wild populations. But after a decade, clownfish became one of the most well-studied marine animals and people learned how to breed them in captivity to meet the remaining increase in demand. A month after finding Dory came out, someone managed to breed Blue Tangs in captivity as well!

🦆 There's a big problem of wild ducks being shot to protect rice patties in Australia. Another example of the problematic bycatch from non-regenerative industrial farming.

🌿 And to take better care of mine and Cosette's growing house plant collection, I discovered this great app Planta to automatically remind us of when to water and care for them. It's a pretty slick process.

End Note

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Have a great week,
Nat

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